12 Origin of Electric-telegraphs. 



been estimated that the daily consumption of them 

 in Great Britain alone amounts to two hundred and 

 fifty millions, or more than eight matches per day 

 for each individual in the kingdom. 



" There is nothing on the Earth so small that it 

 may not produce great things." The most abstract 

 and apparently trivial experiments in original re- 

 r search have in some cases led to inventions and 

 \ results of national and even world-wide importance. 

 The contractions of a frog's leg in the experiments 

 of Galvani, and the movements of a magnetic needle 

 in those of Oersted, have already led to the expen- 

 diture of hundreds of millions of pounds in laying 

 telegraph wires all over the earth, and to an immense 

 extension of international intercourse. But the 

 original experiment of Oersted was not discovered 

 without labour, it was only arrived at after many 

 years of research. 



The saying that "all great things have had small 

 beginnings," is true, not only of electric telegraphs, 

 but also of the great trade of electro-plating, and of 

 the magneto-electric machine which is now largely 

 used instead of the voltaic battery. After Volta had 

 made his small and apparently unimportant experi- 

 ments on the electricity produced by metals and 

 liquids, various persons tried the effect of that 

 electricity upon metallic solutions. Brugnatelli, in 

 /"i8o5, found that two silver medals became gilded in 

 a solution of gold by passing the electricity through 

 them. Mr, Henry Bessemer, in 1834, c ated various 



